August, 2004

When Spain and the Philippines 'gave in to terrorists' and brought home their troops from Iraq, we are told they 'encouraged the terrorists' and increased the risk of terrorist atrocity everywhere. If we pulled our troops out, Alexander Downer says, we would too. This sounds unexceptional and obvious till you ask any Spaniard or any Filipino if it's true. And they tell you the opposite is true. 'Do you seriously think,' they ask, 'that there'll be a terrorist attack now, in the Philippines or Spain, in the next ten years? Or a kidnapped Spaniard or Filipino threatened with beheading, ever, after this? Why would there be?'

And they're pretty much right, I think. However you turn it over in your mind they have to be. What they've done has made their people, if not the rest of us, safe from terror. By 'negotiating with terrorists' they've secured their homelands from terror. And if we did likewise we would too. And this, Alexander Downer says, would be a really bad thing. We'd make Australia safe from terror, sure. But...

How can there be any buts? His job, and Robert Hill's job, is to make Australia safe from terror. So why not do it? Why not? Well, it would 'damage the American alliance', it seems. It would mean America would never come to our aid again. Just as it means that if Red China invaded the Philippines, America would let them. America, now, would abandon the Philippines to the Communists. And if an Islamic alliance invaded Spain, Americans would leave the Spaniards to their fate. Does anyone on earth believe this?

Well, Alexander Downer does, and he's our Foreign Minister. And he's prepared to see a lot of Australians beheaded, hundreds if need be, because...well, because...'you can't give in to the terrorists' demands'. Not now. Not ever.

At the heart of this nonsensical blather is the dunderheaded belief that 'terrorism' is an ideology or a religious faith, when it's only a method, only a means of getting things to happen. What Bin Laden wanted to happen after 9/11, he said in his video on 9/13, was for American troops to get out of Saudi Arabia, and a Palestinian state with secure borders. That was all. And while seeming to defy him, and hunt him down and smoke him out and blow up any country that might contain him, the Americans gave in on the first thing, they shifted their troops to Qatar, and they're working, not too urgently, with roadmaps and whatever, on the second. Other 'terrorists' want the Americans out of Iraq, and the Americans, though not too urgently, are desperately keen to leave.

So what is it precisely that Alexander Downer is prepared to see a lot of Australians beheaded for? What is the big point of principle at stake here? The one that makes the fear and dread we are currently in worthwhile for the next ten years? We 'don't negotiate with terrorists' apparently. Terrorists are really bad people, really dreadful people, whatever their cause.

He should look at world history more closely. Because if he did, he'd see that terrorism nearly always works. De Klerk negotiated with the terrorist Mandela, and eventually gave him South Africa. Britain yielded to the terrorists Begin and Shamir, and eventually gave Israel to the Israelis. By terrorist atrocity the Algerians gained Algeria (see the fine film The Battle of Algiers to note how they did it), the Vietcong gained Vietnam, the Catholic Irish southern Ireland (see the fine film Michael Collins to note how they did it), Castro Cuba, and so on. It was terrorism, raids on Red Indian settlements that gained North America for white Europeans, terrorism, raids on Aboriginal settlements that gained Australia for the white Australians. It was terrorism, genocidal terrorism, that wiped out the Neanderthals and gave the Cro-Magnons their present imperium over the Planet Earth. The Cro-Magnons; us.

Ask not therefore who the terrorists are, or for whom the bombs blow, for we are involved in terrorism, and all of us are products of its plenty. 'We have seen the enemy,' as Walt Kelly's Pogo once remarked, 'and he is us.' Anyone reading this article can follow its line of thought -- that physical safety for all Australians and America's present foreign war may have nothing to do with each other -- but Alexander Downer, the oaf, cannot. He thinks that by putting Australians in more danger he somehow made them more safe.

Let me run that by you again. He thinks that by putting Australians in more danger he somehow made them more safe. And he thinks of Mrs Arroyo that by pulling Filipinos out of danger she somehow made them the more imperilled. And Alexander Downer is an honourable man, I wearily suppose. But if he believes this, and also that WMDs exist and will be found, and Iraq is a better, safer place than it was in 2002, and the world is a better, safer place than it was in 2002, and getting Saddam in the dock was worth the million Iraqis (count them) we killed to do it, and if he believes all terrorists are by definition evil (King David of Israel? King Arthur of Britain? The suiciding heroes of Masada? Sir Francis Drake? Count Von Stauffenberg? Mel Gibson in The Patriot and Braveheart?), he'll believe anything. And the man who'll believe anything is a lunatic. And he should be sedated, and fired, and replaced with somebody sane. If he disagrees with this I'll debate him anywhere.

© Bob Ellis